Oneiroi
by Shadow Logic
Summary: Whatever his waking self might appear to be, Beast Boy's mind is a fertile land of sights, symbols, and truths. BBRae.
1. Tip of the Iceberg

_Hit a small snag in Crossing of the Rubicon, and this flourished. The unconscious mind is a fertile landscape._

* * *

It all starts with Robin calling us to a meeting in the training room. I walk in a few minutes later than everyone else to find him and Raven standing side by side, the others arranged around them. I creep in pretending I can't tell Robin's throat clearing is about my being slightly behind schedule, but Raven coughs delicately and he lets it slide.

"We've been talking, Raven and I. Something new needs to make it into our training regime." Robin is usually trying to push us up to the next level, particularly since the weird shape shifty thing that nearly whipped our asses a couple of months ago, so him speaking of new training techniques isn't weird.

He doesn't just have us running around the training grounds and at the gym a few days a week: Robin has charts and graphs and blow by blow analysis sheets of our abilities and weaknesses, works out personalized training regimes, designs new team strategies, even makes time to personally work us out of ruts.

Honestly, people who think he just sits around flicking darts at a picture of Slade don't know how much hard work heroes do after the bad guy gets chucked into the back of an armored truck.

"So. It's been brought to my attention that, historically, we sometimes sweep pretty serious issues under the rug, then they explode and we're usually too late to deal." Robin looks around the room and not one of us can hold his gaze, even Raven looks slightly to the side of him. Robin probably realizes he's channeling Batman more than a bit, because his voice is a whole lot gentler when he speaks next. "I'm not trying to blame anyone of anything here. We're heroes. We deal with a whole lot. You're all capable and strong, and you've proved it time and time again under the worst circumstances. I'm proud to know each of you." His mask makes it hard to tell sometimes, but I know he's looking straight at me.

I smile. Robin-praise isn't rare, but it makes me feel glowy as a firefly.

"Which brings me to this. We're really good at saving other people. But sometimes we forget how important it is to take care of ourselves so we can do that. And we can't exactly phone Jump Mental Health Services for a few therapy sessions when things become a bit much, not without putting our secrets in danger. And even if we could, sometimes talking to someone else is just that much harder. I should know..." He smiles sheepishly. Out of all of us, Robin's probably the one who's gotten closest to losing it, even if it did involve a little help from Slade's special Double Whammer cocktail: accepting he's made mistakes that might have harmed the team is hard on him.

He looks around like he's waiting for us to yell at him the way we did after the Red X incident, but then Star walks up to him to lean her head on his shoulder and Cyborg gives him the slow smile and I give him two thumbs up. Come on, the big fearless leader is showing us Learned A Lesson, I'd give him four if I could. Then again, I can: I change into a chimpanzee and sit down to raise all my thumbs.

My four thumbs make him chuckle. Score!

He lightens up and turns to Raven, who's put her hand on his shoulder in her own supportive way. He nods to her and she knows what to do, gesturing us into a closer circle, then sitting down with her legs crossed on each other. "Raven is going to teach us some mental housekeeping. Her level of meditation is difficult and would probably take more time than we have to actually master it, but we've gone over some techniques that might come in handy. They'll help us remain aware of our feelings, our fears and whatever else might be running amok in our heads." He nods to her. "Your turn, Raven."

Raven returns the nod. A few stray tendrils of hair wave around with her breath and tickle her nose, so she brushes them aside a little irritably. "The monks of Azarath believe everyone has a mindscape they can access. Basically, your mind is a place that your…spiritual self can visit. The state it's in, the things you see in it, they can help you become aware of what's going on with you and your emotions, even the things you don't want to think about or are deeply suppressed." The hairs float back onto her nose.

I feel a little bad for her, how she's trying to look in control and be engaging and easy to follow and those hairs are ruining her mojo, so I reach out and push the hairs onto her head where they won't bug her. Her eyes follow my hand as I retract it, looking at me when I finally put it back down. She looks at me funny for a split second before looking annoyed. I smile and try to look harmless. It looks like it works, because she looks away instead of kicking me into Herald's dimension or something.

Starfire perks up, clearly having heard of this before. "This sounds most difficult at first, but one finds it easier as time goes on, as the place is exactly the place one wants to be the most." She couples her statement with a smile. Raven is nodding too.

"Azarath lore also says that once in alpha state, most people will naturally gravitate there. It's the place that will feel the safest …remember that if the Puppet King ever breaks out again."

She takes us through breathing exercises, methods of keeping our thoughts quiet. Everyone is embarrassingly surprised when I can actually do it, like they always forget Mento was my first team leader, but because we're trying to put our issues at rest and stuff there's a round of apology almost immediately. Raven doesn't join in. I did see her funny not-smiling-but-pleased expression after the exercise though, so I'm pretty sure she wasn't as surprised as everyone else.

Finally, she tells us about finding our center. When telling us to find where we feel the most 'us' isn't that effective, Raven tries telling us to think of the place where we feel the most at peace. Normally, this would be my rock, the seaside rocky outcropping west of the tower I go to when I'm upset or emotional, but that brings up the time I took not-Terra there a couple of months ago, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. When I open my eyes Raven's are on me. It's then that I realize she's probably examining our emotions with her powers to make sure we're doing OK. Her eyes are soft, so I know she knows I'm upset.

"Something wrong?" Cy and Robin and Star are apparently making progress, so she's speaking softly. I can hear her, my animal hearing is sharp enough, but I edge closer so she can hear me too.

"Guess my happy place isn't really making me happy right now." I did tell the team about Terra not being Terra. I even mentioned the Slade bot. It got Robin all…Robiny for a few weeks until the false leads and radio silence from Slade made it obvious it wasn't phase one of an invasion or anything like that. He probably felt like leaving us a calling card after being away for so long, to remind us he's out there.

Jerk.

But some of the details I've kept to myself, things that were just for Terra and me, and now just for me, like the pies from Ben's or the rundown carnival. And how she ran from me out by my rock.

Raven sighs. It's not her impatient sigh. It's a slow, sad sort of sigh. I'm half afraid, half resigned, because I think she's about to pity me. But then she looks away from me, like she's looking for answers out our bay windows, before turning to me. Not just her head – she shifts her entire body towards me. "You lived in Africa?"

"Well….yeah. How-?"

"Your files." _The ones you poked through to find out my birthdate_ , she doesn't say. I'd be a big hypocrite if I said anything. I'm not even sure how much information is in there, I'm guessing it's files the Doom Patrol built up since I was a kid and sent over when we made the team official. "Maybe that can be your new happy place."

I shake my head. The jungles of Congo were a special place. It was home, a colorful, lush, living home, one that made the city feel dirty and dead when I had to be sent back. But the person I am now doesn't seem to want to actually live those times anymore. I would do almost anything to have my parents back…but I've done too much at eighteen to want to be eight again. I know. It's weird.

"Not Africa then. Well, there has to be someplace you find comfortable." I think, I think, and I think. Finally, a place comes to mind...kind of. I find memories of feeling safe after a long time of feeling anything but, and the place comes second. It's dark and it's quiet, but it's calm and pretty cozy. The details are hazy, but Rae talked about feelings mostly, right? I concentrate on the feeling hard.

I expect to feel something happening to my actual body, being sucked into somewhere or pushed up or anything really. Like Rae's mirror when it sucked us in. All I feel is weightlessness for a fraction of a second. When I open my eyes, I'm alone in the common room.

* * *

For a while I'm caught between freaking out and feeling awed. I might be the first one drooling whenever a hypnotic swirly board pops up, but I can tell this thing feels less real than reality, and just a bit more solid than dreams. Then it hits me: this is my mindscape! Dude, I'm in!

I pump my fist in the air even though I know nobody can see me. I can't even decide where to go first. I run to the window, our own familiar bay window, and I know I'm not actually in Jump City, but I'm not ready for what actually _is_ out there.

The ocean is there, and so is the city skyline, but instead of looking far away it's right there, a human swimming distance away. And right up against the coastline are all my favorite places in the city: the pizza place, my favorite slice of the amusement park, even the old video rental place that went under. The bridge is gone.

And to my left, also a human swimming distance away, another land mass has appeared. There is no beach, which would be weird if this weren't my mind, just tall trees thick with leaves that don't thin out for miles. There is a small opening where the trees have grown into outwards curves to form a natural archway. I think of the closet from Narnia for a second, and I chuckle, but I know what I'm looking at: the Congo jungle. Okay, so Africa might not be the happy place I need to connect with my center, but it's important enough to be here.

I turn around, looking at the dream-common room, which looks pretty much the same. I walk up the stairs to look for the rooms, but instead of the network of corridors my room is right there. Huh? I walk back out the door to the common room, then rush back in: yep, still my room. I guess my mind doesn't really care to add all those other places from the tower.

I walk into my room. It's become huge. A part of it looks just like the room I've known for the past few years at Titans tower, with my bunk beds and my junk in the corners and my comics crowding the desk. But instead of windows and walls, darkness yawns out into infinity, like the room is just a tiny place under a spotlight in the middle of...someplace.

The darkness makes me feel funny. It's fear and something cagey, and frankly I'm not surprised. Maybe my fears live down there? If my fear looks anything like Rae's, I think I'll sit out visiting them for now. I so don't want another run in with the monster from Wicked Scary.

I poke around my room for a while. There are things here that I know are at my real room in the tower, but also lots of things that aren't, like my old wind-up monkey, pictures of my parents that never made it out of Congo, pictures I know nobody ever took of me with Rita and Mento, playing with Cliff while he doesn't look very amused, Larry playing with me while _I_ look pretty unamused (c'mon, he cheated at hide-and-seek, always!). I take my time going through the pictures, then look back at the dark corners.

I'm not kidding when I say I expect the freaky fearmonster to come out. Do I even need to go down there right now? I remember getting kicked really good when in Nevermore. Could my fears actually hurt me? Could accepting them make them go away?

I've got too many questions. I'm not ready. I'm beginning to think of a way out so I can ask the actual expert when everything goes dim and I hear a voice like it's coming through water -

 _Beast Boy?_

I open my eyes, my actual physical eyes, back in the training room, on the mat as someone pokes my shoulder. Star and Robin are looking at me, Star so close I could probably brush her nose with my eyelash, and Cyborg's foot to my left indicates he's the one jabbing at me. Raven hangs back, but she's peering over Star and Robin. She's the one who called my name.

"Uh, hi?"

"You were getting agitated." Raven says simply.

"You were also the last to return. You OK grass stain?" Cyborg adds in between pokes.

"It was awesome! There's a bit of Congo and all my stuff was there, but there were these huge blank spots in my room, they were dark and scary and I figured I had to look in, but it was creepy and I didn't feel ready to go poking through my fears and stuff, but then I thought of when we kicked butt in Nevermore and wondered if it could hurt me, and just when I was trying to come back you called me". Robin shakes his head. Raven, however, looks thoughtful.

"The next time you go in, try investigating the dark. It's your own darkness. If you confront it, it can't hurt you. There shouldn't be demons in your mind, and because you're not in there in a physical form, nothing you fight there should leave you physical damage." She doesn't say it won't. I wonder if I should be worried.

The exercise is concluded for the day and we file out of the training room. When I turn to challenge Cy to a round of racing games for tonight's dish duty though, I could swear I just barely missed catching Raven staring at me.

She isn't, not that she'll do it when I'm looking back of course. But there are two creases on her forehead I don't usually see when she's relaxed.


	2. Mirror of the Id

I'm curious.

Robin used to try and get me with the old "curiosity killed the cat", but sometimes my being curious has actually been good. Like when I went all 007 and found the bad guy lurking in Raven's book.

So I figure it isn't that bad when the thing poking at my curious is my own mind.

That night after everyone goes to bed, I go through what Raven taught us. It takes a while, just like the first time, but I make it into my mindscape OK. I go back into my dream-room, take a good deep breath and choose one of the corners.

Perspective is funny in this place. As I get closer, the darkness seems bigger, until it feels like I'm standing at the mouth of a cave full of something dark and tangible like cloth.

Creepy.

I wonder if I can bring up a dream flashlight. It doesn't work, so I guess I have to actually face my darkness, not just in the metaphoric sense. My mind sucks though. How can it summon a whole continent and not give me a flashlight?

I stake another step into the darkness, and for a second it feels like stepping through a dense velvet curtain, but then I'm through and there's light. At the other side is Terra's room.

For a moment, my breath catches painfully in my chest. It looks just like it did a few months ago when I took Not-Terra to see it, the stars and the faux rock bed, the box I made her. Even the sky outside her windows is still orange and purple.

The walls are plastered with posters of things I know I don't have pictures of, just like my room: a poster of Terra on the day I met her, winking that flirty wink at me. There's Terra's profile out by the rocks, frozen in the act of tossing a pebble into the water. Terra laughing openly, my hand on her shoulder, and I remember the pizza eating contest. Terra crying and clinging to the purple and black of my uniform, lost, afraid and ashamed after losing control of her powers that one time underground. Terra rising over the edge of our roof framed by the setting sun, smiling and sure of herself – the day she came back while we played volleyball. There's a poster of Titans Tower sticking halfway up from the ground, and while there is no Terra visible, that memory is full of her.

There're other posters, but these look like I got at them in tiger form, because they're completely shredded. There's a poster by the window that has just enough left of Terra's head to let me know she's wearing Slade's neural interphase suit in it. Another, torn down the middle, looks like it has a border: up close I can see it's the moment before she closed a rift in the ground in my face, her mocking expression and the jagged earth around her. Several other ripped up ones have just enough left of a torso in a white shirt or bits of a black tie, so they belong to memories with Not Terra.

I walk further into the room, invaded by that feeling that comes just before you puke your guts out, when you know you're about to feel pretty bad, but couldn't stop it if you tried. In the wall behind the head of Terra's bed I can see a perfectly whole poster of Terra's face as seen from way up close, her eyes closed, her mouth just barely parted. The rusted old netting from the Ferris wheel cart frames her face.

The last poster makes me sad and angry. My date with her was one of the happiest days of my life. The almost kiss wasn't as happy, because she was so sad and sounded so desperate, but it was emotional, and I'd thought it was ours. Finding out that she was talking about my friends getting flattened by Sladebots while I was out eating pie with the person that made it all possible makes this memory feel wrong. Poisoned.

I lunge for it, but I don't even touch it before an invisible force rips it to pieces. And then the voices start. They're loud and sharp, not echoey like the movies make them out to be.

 _I'm just a girl with a geometry test next period and I haven't studied_

 _Perhaps she wanted to keep you as a pet_

 _I don't have any friends, remember?_

 _I hope you're not expecting a goodbye kiss_

The voices are coming from the walls, or the ceiling, I'm not sure, but they're cutting me to the quick. Mostly it's Terra's voice, with Slade adding his twopence every now and then.

 _What's the matter? Had enough?_

Ok. Apparently Darth Beast Boy's voice is there, too.

 _No wonder "_ Terra dumped you _"_

When I turn around, he's right there. Gray and black and with eyes glowing red in a way that'd give Trigon a run for his money. And I still feel like I ought to be a little taller.

"Hey dipstick."

"Oh. I'm so scared. I just called myself a dipstick." I shudder dramatically. That infuriating little smirk doesn't go away as he passes me by heading for Terra's bed and dropping himself on it like a ton of bricks. Lounging on it like he belongs.

Dude, this is messed up.

"Weren't you only brought out by Trigon?"

"Yeah, I don't actually exist physically. But that doesn't make me any less real in here. Trigon can take me out of you, but you created me to begin with. I'm…Darth You."

"Tch. Very original."

"Yeah, you're pretty cliché sometimes. I mean, calling a game that uses your dirty socks for a ball _stank_ ball?" That smirk has a really nasty edge. I never smirk at anyone like that. He snickers at me, mockingly. "So, what d'you think of the place? Emo romanticky enough?" My jaw clenches. "Or maybe you'd like to mope on her empty bed for a bit, for old times' sakes?"

I don't answer. I just morph into a Grizzly and lunge at him.

"Aww, poor Garfield. Got you in the feels again?" He doesn't morph, probably because most animals can't keep up much of a conversation. Not unless he morphs into the same animal form I'm using- and that'd be a tactical mistake. Darth Me just keeps up dodging and avoiding, moving away or out just seconds before I strike. I don't know if he's reading my – our? – mind or anything. I don't know what I'm doing myself.

After a while, one that feels endless, I feel tired, barely aware that I let myself morph back. Darth Me snickers at me again from beside Terra's lava lamp. The more he does it, the higher the sound bumps on my anger triggers list. "Not a scratch." He plucks his black and gray uniform for emphasis. I look around. He's...right. The room should be in ruins after all the scratching and pouncing, but everything is just the way it was. Even the sheets on the bed are straight.

"Ugh…"

I feel tired, sore and angry, and Darth Me still lounges, fresh as a damn lettuce. Maybe this isn't the right way to fight the dark side. I'll need to ask Raven-

"Oooh. What's this I hear?" Darth Me stands up on the table and cups his hand around one ear. His red eyes open wider, but I can't tell if it's part of the act. "Is widdle Beasty Boo calling…for Rae Rae?"

 _Rae Rae_? Isn't that what Mother May-Eye called her? Darth Me looks suddenly inspired. "Come on. Call her. Let Raven see just how messed up it is in here. Whad'ya think she'll say, seeing this here? How you still worship the girl who actually tried to kill her? Who knew all her weaknesses thanks to you?" He jumps off the table and walks, walks till he's all up in my face. "She'll be _so_ happy to know… _everything_ about you." You could cut glass with that smirk now.

But then I know Darth Me's messed something up, because I feel a thumping, four-legged run in what should be the hall outside, and his red eyes turn round with shock as my primal side, with the long hair and huge claws, lopes into the room, huffing and growling at _him_.

O-oh man, it is so my turn to be all mocking. "What's the matter? Had enough?" Darth Me backpedals into the window so fast he trips. The Beast is on him, growling menacingly.

"Dude, how'd I forget the _dog_ …" Darth Me tries to push the Beast's snout away. It earns him a loud roar and not a little drool as the Beast, angry, shows him all its teeth. "Fine, I'm leaving." He crawls out from under the menacing snout and starts to turn towards the window. "Oh. But before I do? Catch." Darth Me chucks a small brown something at me "Food for thought." I catch it instinctively. Darth Me evaporates.

It's a penny. Why'd he throw me a- oh. We were talking about Raven. I guess this is the penny I found the day the world was going to end.

The Beast darts to my side, then kneels beside me. His ears are relaxed, and you could almost call his expression smiley. If he had a tail, he'd probably be wagging it: where Darth Me radiated aggression, the Beast is friendly, glad to see me almost. Which he should. We made peace a long time ago. "Good boy." I pat his arm and the Beast gives me a pleased drool bath with his huge tongue. Eurgh. I'm glad psychic drool doesn't travel into the physical plane. Then he rises onto his hind legs in a way so disturbingly human I almost gawk, grabs my arm and hauls me enthusiastically out the door.

Funnily enough, we don't pop up back in my room after the darkness. This time we reach a long room, barely lit by a wan moon that pokes in through a corner of the windows. It still looks like it belongs in the tower. The room is all floor-to-ceiling windows, no furniture.

Except for that long thing like a closet in the very center. As I walk up to it, the light in the room seems to increase marginally, and I'm looking at my own face reflected in a massive mirror.

It's not all elegant like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter. It's a plain full length, a little old-fashioned but not ancient. And really big. I take a step back, and notice that my reflection isn't holding the little copper coin, but a golden apple.

"So this is the part where I pull the Stone-I mean the apple, out of the mirror." I look around the room, but only the Beast is there, sniffing at a patch of floor with interest. No Professors in turbans hiding bad guys on the back of their heads lurking in any corners.

I look at myself in the mirror again. Other than the fact that I'm holding the wrong thing, it's exactly me there. I bare my teeth, the image bares them too, I make all sorts of funny faces and the image makes them back at me. Then the Beast finishes checking out whatever fascinating scent it found and walks up to the mirror: then everything gets weirder.

At first sight, the Beast's reflection in the mirror is perfectly ordinary, but then I notice his eyes aren't blank. I've morphed in front of my own nonmagical mirror, I know all my animal forms have freaky blank eyes. Everyone has told me so at least once, too. In the mirror though, the Beast has dark green eyes.

My eyes. I've seen them enough to know.

"Okay, I think I get it. You're not the Mirror of Erised, but you must be the mirror of something or other, because you do _not_ reflect things as they are." But I put the penny in my pocket, just to be sure. It doesn't turn into the apple when it gets there, or the Sorcerer's Stone for that matter. Beside me, the Beast stares, then gives its reflected face a good lick: I can think of plenty of animals who can't recognize themselves in mirrors, but I guess he can tell.

I'm ready to sit down in front of the mirror and puzzle some more when my mindscape shudders, as if it's made of water. As everything starts to dissolve I focus on the Beast standing very still, its completely perked ears moving sharply to capture sound and eyes wide like he's expecting something. His blank eyes are the last thing to lose their solidness. And I can imagine, maybe even sense a longing there, as if for something he'd been waiting for a long time.


	3. Unsayable

I wake up to a shadow beside my bed. I recognize the outline of Raven's head a split second after I've lashed out at her with my arm, elbow first… or tried to. I feel so thoroughly beat, it's all I can do not to groan when Raven reaches out, grabs the arm I missed elbowing her gut with and hauls me upright.

"Ow. Morning to you too, Raven." I might be being just a little whiney, because she actually handled me carefully. It's just that my muscles feel really sore.

She doesn't say anything, just puts the tips of her fingers in weird places like the top of my head, my throat, the mouth of my stomach. She runs a finger clinically down my spine to between my shoulder blades, like she's looking for loose bolts.

"Did I miss the memo on nighttime checkups or something?"

"No." She lets her palm rest over my chest for a few seconds, then pulls away. She's hovering beside me, level with the top bunk, I realize "Your mind was radiating very strangely. You were in a very deep state of unconsciousness, but your mind was _ringing_ with very powerful psychic backlash." I hear her sigh very softly. "I had to…use a bit of magic to call you back."

"That's weird. All I did was check up on my mindscape for a bit." At this, Raven tenses for a fraction of a second, before pressing a hand to her own face. It's as close as she gets to actually facepalming.

Great. I've gone and done something wrong.

Raven hits the switch with her powers. I could tell since I woke up that she probably wasn't in uniform, but now I can see she is clearly in something like pajamas, a plain black t-shirt about three sizes too large for her and loose shorts that dangle a little past her knees.

Am I gaping? I sure hope I'm not.

It's always a shock to see each other doing civilian. Our uniforms are a big part of who we are, and that goes double for those of us who don't really have a secret identity. We even sleep in uniform when calls are coming in too often, but it's not like we really _need_ to, I mean, changing clothes fast is like Superkid 101. I must have learned to get into my Doom Patrol jumpsuit within ten seconds of an alarm my second week under Mento.

But Raven is so much her outfit in my mind, old-fashioned and simple but practical, that seeing her in clothes that could fit a couple more of her…it makes her look small. Vulnerable, even. She narrows her eyes at me, probably sensing my shock, but I smile and she softens. And then her face shifts into something a lot like guilty.

"I didn't think any of you would want to go exploring without supervision. That was a mistake." I blink. When it comes to magical mumbo jumbo (the thing, not the bad guy, haha!) I'm prone to messing up. So this means I didn't this time?

She takes the hand off her face and looks straight at me; irrationally, I wish she'd left the lights off: her look is just so earnest. I'm suddenly sure I would have felt it, even if I was completely blind, because it is _intense_.

It is the East, and Raven is the sun!

…man, the exhaustion must be getting to me.

Thankfully, Raven has no idea what kind of stuff my exhausted imagination is spouting. She hovers higher up and floats onto the bed, beside my feet, but she's still looking at me. "Staying in your mindscape for too long when you're alone and untrained can be dangerous. It's a lot like leaving your body behind. Like when the Puppet King removes us from our bodies." Her stare grows more intense still, a little like she's studying a specimen in a petri dish, only I'm sure you don't look at little spots of mold like she's looking at me right now. Worried and soft. "You must feel very tired." It isn't a question.

"I feel like I got punched in the face by Overload." My muscles even tingle a little.

She nods. "It's draining. When you're just starting, it takes a lot of energy." Then she pauses, contemplative for a moment. "You felt like you were having a fight."

I want to gloss over it. Really, I do. I mean, somebody kick me, Darth Me had a point there when he insinuated Raven might be conflicted over Terra. Sure, Terra threw _me_ down a ditch, one I nearly broke my neck in and then sacrificed her life to save us and _then_ pretended not to know me…but she actually stayed behind to suffocate Raven in the mud. We all saw it. Robin checked out the underground church-hideout-thingy while Slade was dead, and he found his cache of recordings about this thing he called Plan Gaia (dude, can you get any cheesier?): we all saw each other die. And Raven went under with Terra's taunts about her fragile control ringing in her ears. If I don't know how to feel about Terra, Raven is probably torn between pitying her and wanting to throttle her.

And, while nobody's pointing fingers? That last bit feels like my fault. I mean, Terra said it herself: I'd told her all about Raven's 'temper tantrums'. It feels like another not-so-small betrayal of Raven to be all messed up about her would-be killer, especially after everything that's happened.

But I can't hide this. I am just not the type to chuck things under the rug.

* * *

"…and then you called me awake." I want to stare at the blankets, but they're not very interesting, to be honest. I swing my legs a little over the edge of my bunk.

Raven is sitting at the end of my top bunk now, her legs over the edge too, but they're really still. She doesn't swing them or shake her leg or anything.

"You've got a lot of unresolved issues to face." She has more stuff to say, and Raven isn't the kind to hold back (especially when it's me), but I guess shrink-Raven and everyday-Raven have to be different. "I'll be around whenever you need me. But…I won't always be able to help you."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"I'm sorry."

"There's a lot going on up here that it seems I don't really get." I point up at my forehead.

"I know. But…it's a lot of stuff that I'm not supposed to mess with. Because it's yours."

I feel really lost all of a sudden…abandoned. Yeah, I know it's stupid, but I feel a little like I'm being dismissed. Like I'm dirty, and she doesn't want to get her hands soiled by the emoness. Raven wouldn't judge like that, not ever, especially when it's stuff I can't control. But I can't help the feeling.

"Beast Boy…Garfield." I jolt. Dude, nobody ever calls me that. Not since Rita outed me. "Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing. Maybe…I chose the wrong words. I won't always be able to help you because my insights can only guide you so far. Not because…not because of you."

"I know that."

"OK." She stays quiet for what feels like a long time. "I want you to try and sleep."

"OK, I can do that." I expect her to get up to leave, but she doesn't, so I raise one eyebrow.

"I'd like to stay until I'm sure you're not about to wander off into your mind accidentally. You might not come back if that happens."

What!?

"What!? That can actually happen?"

"Sometimes. The mind is an emerging product of the brain, not an area in the physical organ itself. The link between mind and body can be fragile."

I think I get it. "So my body might stay here, but the part of me that is, well, me, might wander off?"

"Well…yes. I can separate from my body with some measure of control, but it's taken years." She reaches out, her open palm forward when she hovers it in front of the general area of my face, and I wonder if she's sensing my aura or something. "You feel OK…but I'd like to be sure."

I strike a muscle man pose. "I _always_ look okay." Raven crosses her arms over her chest and raises her eyebrow at me, but she can barely contain her smile.

Huh.

I like moments like these, when I can tell Raven and I are friends. I mean, I know we are, we'd take a Sladebot for each other, duh. I just really like it when I can banter with her and it's not just me talking at someone, when there's actual give and take. When I tried this sort of thing back when we met, she'd look at me like I'd tried to poke her in the eye and phase somewhere far, far away.

Raven floats easily off the bed and onto the chair by my desk. Her inner bookworm makes her automatically reach for the reading material that she finds there – my graphic novels – before she catches herself and cringes.

"Someday, you'll read one of those and see how fun they can be." She doesn't answer, just looks at me pointedly. "For real. I'd even rec a few I know you'd like." Something dark and really layer-y like Spawn or Constantine Hellblazer or…

 _Yawn_.

I recline on my pillows, and I wonder how I've been awake all this time because I'm about ready to drop like a ton of bricks. I hear a click and the world goes dark, so I figure Raven hit the lights again. I can't see her unless I turn around to look (which is far too much effort right now, rest required!), but I can hear her and I can just…tell she's there.

Raven watching over me in my sleep. It feels nice. Like when I first joined the Doom Patrol and everyone took turns to help me adjust to my new room at night…only it's different…cause…

 _Zzz._

* * *

My dreams are really, really convoluted. They're confusing and scary, and several times I feel like I'm alternating between my dreamscape and actually dreaming.

I'm in Congo, in my parents' research outpost deep in the jungle, and all around me I can hear disembodied voices. I recognize Robin and Cyborg, Mento and Cliff, and a voice I can't rationally recognize, but it's clear in the dream that it's my dad's. I try to reach them through the underbrush but they sound like they're over the place and I finally give up and try to call out, but _my_ voice is gone. I panic and try to run back to the outpost but I keep getting lost.

Then I wake up – only I don't, not really. I'm back at the room of my mind with the mirror in it. I realize right away that I can't move as easily, it takes everything I've got just to put one foot in front of the other. I can see myself reflected in the glass as I power my way towards it – it's regular me, only every time I stop moving, I sink. Like I'm in quicksand, except as far as I knew, quicksand swallows you faster when you try to resist, and this is the opposite.

Only the image in the mirror sinks, because when I look down, my own feet are on the floor where they should be, but I don't want to know what happens if the me in the mirror goes under, so I keep walking with everything I've got.

I reach the glass after what feels like forever. Something pops up, floating above my head in the reflection: it's the golden apple! I look above me, but again the apple is still just a penny on this side of the glass. I reach my hand up to it, pinching it between my fingers - suddenly it feels like they've fused to the copper. The penny floats up, taking me with it, and it feels funny, like it's carrying all my weight just from those two tiny points of contact instead of dragging me along.

Then it just feels way scary, because the penny rockets up into the ceiling, which gives way into velvety darkness, and then to some quiet, peaceful place beyond.

* * *

I wake up on the floor next to my bunk beds in a tangle of sheets and with the morning sun on my face. It's not really early morning sun or really late morning sun. There aren't any Ravens anywhere. I wonder if she left during the night. I wonder if this means I've been sort of wandering in my dreamscape all night.

Other than the pain in my head where I probably hit it on the way down, I'm pretty OK.

Yeah. All's good.

…

OK, I'm also so tired I don't even know what I'm going to do to get out of the Bedsheet Trap of Doom, let alone get to _work_ today. Dude, am I in trouble or what?!

Morphing into a mouse does the trick with the tangle, but I need to figure out what to do about falling asleep on my feet. I'll need candy and a cold shower. Maybe coffee, because it always seems to perk people up on TV. Even though I've never cared for it.

My eyesight flickers and I panic for all of five seconds until I realize it's just my eyelids fighting to stay open.

I am so done with this day it isn't even funny, and it hasn't even _begun_.

* * *

"So, BB."

I'm groggy and unfocused, but somehow, Cy's words make it through the dreamy fog I'm wandering in. My brain seems to kick in right then and I realize he wants to be acknowledged. "Huh?"

"I'm not sure if I should ask about you or about that cup in front of you."

I look down at the mug of coffee. "What about it?"

I nabbed some of it, straight black and unsweetened from Robin's coffee maker, and I couldn't even bring it halfway to my face before the bitterness shot up my nose and fried my neurons. I don't know how Fearless Leader can drink this nasty gunk like it's water, but it definitely explains the Fearless part.

So anyway, I figured I needed this stuff, just for today. So I took off the edge with a half dozen spoonfuls of sugar and a squirt of soy milk. It started looking kinda like hot chocolate after the eighth squirt, and I was reaching for the sugar cup when Cyborg came in and saw me.

"Just a mug of coffee."

Cy peeks at the mug suspiciously. "Since when do you drink coffee?" He takes a discrete whiff and adds "if there's any coffee left in there" under his breath, but I can hear him.

"Don't know. Everyone's always talking about how this stuff cures sleepies and I had a bad dreahhhhhh…" I trail off with a yawn that makes my jaw pop.

Thankfully, Cy's a clever enough guy to fill in the blanks. "Must've been some nightmare you were having. What was it about?"

Here I hesitate. I'm not ready to talk about Terra and Not Terra and all the trash Darth Me hurled last night, but I've gotta say something. So I just tell him about seeing Darth Me and having him be a jerk about Terra, picking my way around the details so I don't have to tell him about the Terra room in my head. I mean, it sounds weird even to me, I don't want to know how it will sound to someone else. Well, to someone who didn't have a dream clone of her demon father in her head.

It's also making me a little desperate, how much Terra is in my thoughts now. She's around even more than when she turned out to be a double agent, and about as much as when she turned to stone, only the thoughts about her feel a lot more like they're intruding. Back then they were just the normal frequent thoughts you have about the person you're mourning. Now it feels a little like a return to that and a little like she's popping in there after being uninvited.

And maybe also a little like something is changing, like, well, like something is about to happen and I know it is because it's happening in my mind and I guess stuff can't happen behind my back up there, but it's not happening yet and I can't put it into words.

That last thought rings a bell somewhere, but before I can chase it down I'm being poked by a metallic finger. "Raven said 'good morning', B". Cyborg points somewhere behind me.

Surely enough, Raven is standing a few feet away from where I'm slouching. She gives me a long, probing look. I decide Raven's eyes are the kind of eyes that make you feel like you're getting lasered when she decides to look at you hard. The more I look at them, the more I wonder if she's letting her emotions out more now, or if I was just too big of a clunk to notice how much she expresses with the upper half of her face.

"Sorry Rae. Ah, good morning. I'm sorry I…didn't say hello."

"It's OK. Don't mention it." I wonder if she got it that I don't want to talk about last night just yet, but Raven's crazy smart. And like a second later it hits me that she only went and answered verbally instead of just nodding after my apology because she got the message and she wanted to tell me it was OK with her to not share last night's adventure.

I can see her hide a yawn as soon as Cyborg turns away to keep tinkering around the stove with eggs and bacon, and when he asks how she slept, she gives me the quickest of sidelong looks and tells him she slept fine.

I wonder how long she stayed and if she had to poke my mind right side up. I wonder why she wasn't there in the morning.

And then I wonder why it bothers me, both that she might have stayed up late for me, and that she was gone when I woke up.


End file.
